


I'll Find You

by ASignificantWhisper



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Masturbation, Mentions of bipolar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 09:50:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12166533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ASignificantWhisper/pseuds/ASignificantWhisper
Summary: The one where Ian Gallagher makes a promise.





	I'll Find You

**Author's Note:**

> *GASP* 
> 
> Who could this be? After over a year, unfinished stories, one-shots, and so forth? Yep, it's me! I've been in a rut and this is the first piece I've written in one sitting in over a year. I know it's been a while and people have probably grown tired of waiting on updates. Hopefully this is okay? I really wanted a parallel from Mickey in season 4 (you'll see it when you read. I'm so not gonna spoil.) And I may have added in a few things of my own to said parallel.
> 
> I may make this a series? Feedback will help decide that. Let me know if you want more? I see this as being two more one-shots. If liked, I'll probably classify it as a series. But until then, it's a one-shot. I got emotional writing it. It's obviously post season 7. 
> 
> It's a rough draft that I somewhat edited, so it might have mistakes or suck ass, or have repetitive words, but I'm trying to just let myself go and write what I feel. A new approach that I've only done a few times, but it's worked for No Running, so here's to hoping it has with this one too. :) Enjoy! 
> 
> Find me on my Tumblr : wroteclassicaly.tumblr.com and my Twitter : ClassicalyWrote

It happens a lot lately.... Especially at night when there's no noise. City sirens of his job don't exist, bustling Chicago halts for slumbering hours, it seems. Even the L is a simple lulling he can't really hear without strain anymore. Gunshots are gone. Everything is simply and so utterly fucking silent. Not even the shitty Southside provides background television sequences to stop them. They're in his head, bouncing off the confined slates of his fucked up brain, ping-ponging off his shitty plaster bedroom walls. Maybe that's what is making it crumbled? Screw the rats theory. Yeah, must be him. Ian-fucking-Gallagher and his fucked up genes, at it again. Gentrification can't be blamed for this one, not this time around....

 

He knows why it's harder to sleep now. He is all too fucking aware why the worry gnaws at his guts like vile acid. Then there's the ever present nightmares. Oh, oh they love him. All scenarios he could not ever want are a primetime slot when his lids are slammed shut. He's sees his mistakes flash back and forth, but only briefly. He's got one most important reason on his mind. Buried, clawing, hurtling through. It's him and it's there. / _Always_ /. Ian hasn't been able to shut up about him to his shrink, confusing the poor woman at first. _'Ian, what about the guy at the center you were talking about?'_ But she corrected herself with a knowing look.

  
Yeah.... yeah Ian talks about Mickey. Who else could understand? And if his insurance will pay for him to actually have someone at least pretend to give a fuck, then he'll sing like a canary from Canaryville to her. After he started letting himself let loose everything about Mickey he felt he was being forced to smother down to stand, it's like he can't stop. Mexico had done nothing but increase this downpour. It became less about his pardoning normalcy, less about how good he was and his life was with Trevor, with everyone and his job, and more about what he / _really_ / has been holding back.

  
He begged his therapist to for once label him, / **because** / the damned pain was too much. So a label might be easier, / **because** / all he'd really lost in the last two years had piled on. He couldn't cookie cutter it out this time. It was cutting right back into him. His shrink had dropped the L word on him. **Love**. He wasn't manic and he knew it. She knew it. _'You're suffering from what we call heartbreak, Ian. It can happen when you're in love, when you're still in love.' Still, still in love._

  
Rolling over in his bed, tossing his sweat slicken sheets, the redhead reaches for his backpack, dumping the contents into his lap. He scatters through them, panic electrocuting his veins with what feels like ice. What if he lost it? His book is next. He breaths an audible sigh when the picture falls out. Crinkled around the edges, but beautiful all the same, Ian gazes into his hauntingly safe blue eyes. His fingertip thumbs along the jaw of the man who didn't know his picture was being taken by a captivated patron. Ian remembers it all too clearly.

 

  
His friend at the club showing him Mickey's picture that he'd taken when Mick had come looking for Ian. Everyone going about the mysterious raven haired beauty in their bar. Ian was defensive, obviously taking the picture for himself. Stunned Mickey was at the club, how he had cared and tried when no one else gave two flying fucks. He studied it closely, kept it close. No one ever knew that. For his adjustment period after Mickey was imprisoned, when Ian had decided to go on the meds, he didn't tell anyone that Mickey's picture was who he talked to when shit got rough. He didn't let anyone see him cry at night. He did not tell his older brother that when he slept it was Mickey in his brain, battling his disease with him. Ian indulged in the fantasies, letting Mickey help him stabilize.

  
But that's when he was smacked down. Now his head was cleared, the fog was lifted. He didn't have his boyfriend anymore to share it with, or be proud of him. He dumped him out like a sack of trash and now Mickey was gone. Ian didn't want to think about it. He pussied out, he ran, telling himself this life was better for him. He pushed Mickey down further so he could survive. He was stronger with Mickey. Mickey was stronger without him. But yet, fuck, they were stronger / ** _together_** /.  
And just when Ian finally settled into his play pretend, Mickey again gave himself and his all to Ian. _That, that was...._ Ian knew if the law caught Mickey that would be it. His heart was together at least, until he let Mickey cross that border alone. It ripped itself back in two pieces. This time though, Ian wants his other piece back, he needs his other half.

 

A shudder raises the red hairs on his arms. Mickey has probably moved on, he deserves beyond moving on. Ian wants Mickey to hate him because their love has always been scary and he's always afraid of messing it up since his diagnosis, so he messes it all up before it can do more damage on its own. He deserves for Mickey to hit him, hate him, rub his freedom in his face. Ian's lungs spiral into knots. He clutches his peace close to his chest, tossing his tank-top into the hamper by the door on his way out to the bathroom.

  
When he's got the door closed behind him, double checking in his head that Fiona is still pulling her all-nighter at the diner with Lip, Carl at school, Debbie and the baby with Neil, Liam at his new friend's, and Frank - who gives a shit where, he adjusts that portrait of his lover into the cheap medicine cabinet above the sink. With shaking hands on his hips that's bound by the adrenaline Ian gets before touching himself, he paces briefly, his heartbeat churning his rushing blood full speed ahead through his ears.

  
His sweatpants are tugged to his knees with his boxers, his cock already half hard and waiting. He murmurs a few quiet breaths, whimpering into the echoes of the bathroom, giving himself a raw tug to draw him up onto his toes, forehead closer to Mickey's picture. He feels it, that rush of warmth dusting his neck, flooding his body in the most delicious way. He grips himself at the base, releasing to swipe his thumb across that bead of white. The moment he lathers it with a sopping wet slide, he bites hard into his lip, jerking at a slow, but steady pace. He stares into those eyes, imagining them looking back up at him, always pleasing him, going out of his way. Ian's grip wavers but he keeps going.

  
_Mickey._ Under him, their fingers together, bodies slotted like two puzzle pieces in this violent world that found solace and salvation in each other. Ian's vision feels the first tell tale bites of tears sting in the corners. His fingers go numb, attempting to jerk his cock harder. _Mickey._ Beautiful blue eyes somewhere he doesn't know where, or if he's safe. Harder, he tries, not even caring his member is protesting, softening. _Mickey._ Giving him what he needs without trying to take anything. Ian's teeth clench so hard they chatter, his hand leaving his cock, a hard pain colliding with the shatter as he watches his knuckles demolish the Gallagher's bathroom mirror into one spider webbed crack. He's hissing, pulling his hand back, glaring at the picture with pants of breath that won't let him fucking rest.

 

There's dots of blood shredding his skin from the knuckles down. He tests his coordination, letting in the pain. Ripping the picture from its place, he's pocketing it in his now adjusted sweats, leaving the glass untouched. There's nothing he can do for it. He lets himself turn off, not even think or protest to sliding his boots, t-shirt and coat on. He feels that aching pull across town. It's late, almost morning. He has time.

 

~*~

  
All the stones used to bother him, remind him of things cold and gone. Worthless, useless, missed, valuable. His shrink had tons of emotional labels for a graveyard. Ian saw it as a dead house of the overly loved and stable, versus the broken hearted and the lost. He doesn't see it that way anymore. Not everything is so. Everyone here has stories. He feels for cold rocks that glisten under the fall moonlight, bare, no traces of flowers or anything else to keep them loved. Ian wonders if this is how Mickey feels. If he made him worse off than before.

  
It doesn't take him long to find her stone. His nostrils flare out, his rough breath blowing a cool burst of air into the quiet night. "Fucking Frank." He lets his knees hit cold ground, pushing the littering beer bottles and cigarette butts acting as makeshift decoration off her place. None of the kids ever came here, just Ian. She had so much in her heart and she let herself get lost. Ian doesn't want that. He doesn't want to be someone cruel. He didn't want to be Monica. He spent so much time being scared of his mom that he didn't embrace the best parts of her he carries with him. His heart and his compassion. That balance, he can't foot it. Tossing the trash from on her grave in his spare jacket pocket, Ian reaches out to trace her name.

 

"Hey, mom." His hands clasp together in prayer, but he doesn't pray right now. Just lets himself go. He always could with them. _Mickey. Monica. Mine_ , as he called them. His mother and his everything. _The M's_. They understood. "I know we always like to be out late together, huh?"

  
Ian laughs himself into a sniffle, his hand clinging to the top of her headstone. With his other hand he's got Mickey's picture out, thumbpad stroking it slowly. "Wish you two coulda met each other." On his haunches Ian goes. "He would've told you to fuck off and you would've tried to slap his ass, probably call him a dick that didn't deserve me...."

  
Ian's stopping a beat, voice cracking, causing the cold air to burn his lungs as he struggles to get out two breaths to speak. "But I didn't deserve him. I just.... freaked out, I messed up. I didn't know what to do." He looks to her grave through blurred vision, as if to apologize for what he's about to confess.

 

"I didn't want to end up like you. Me and him end up like you and Frank. But he was so good, mom. He treated me more than...." Ian swallows harshly around the bobbing of his Adam's apple. "He held me and I forgot how to fucking breathe. I forgot everytime Fiona cried when we were growing up, when Frank hit us, when you left. He touched me and I was okay, but then I wasn't and I didn't want that shit hitting him. Not after everything I put him through, after everything he went through."

  
Ian is climbing to his feet, knuckles twisting in the leaf covered dirt, Mickey's picture still tight in his grasp. He's shivering, shaking in on himself, swiping a hand across his tear soaked cheek, cold with autumn wind. His throat constricts, his eyes tilt to the sky then back down to her name.

  
"I miss you so much. I don't know what to do anymore. You always knew what to tell me when you came back. Tell me what to do. Please, mom, just. I don't know what to do." He's begging into the night, body wracked with choking sobs. Her name remains in the moonlight, stone glistening but empty. Ian reaches for the tattoo shoulder behind him, eyes closing to let the wind carry a fresh wave of tears from him.

  
He reaches into his pocket and grasps the quarter, bending to lay it with the small knick-nack of a bird he'd gotten for her. "Now you don't have to ask me for money this time." He grins softly at the joke, pressing his forehead to her stone, holding Mickey's picture to his heart all at once.

 

When he stands, he moves to walk away, but a large breeze circles the air, gliding through his hair as he's turned, leaves gathering at his feet in an organized pile. A.... mess, but all together there. Different colors. He turns back to her grave, a smile slowly pressing into his lips, his tears molding softly into his features.  
His attention finds Mickey's picture again and it's clear now. He's got his text into Sue and his fingers rapidly typing in his card information on the airline website. Exiting the grave yard, his footfalls are heavier, with a sure stance he hasn't felt in so long, he stares with a gentle coerce at his ex-boyfriend's picture still in hand, phone with flight email confirmation number in the other. "A one way to Mexico", he lets himself say it into the night now, promising those blue eyes.

 

"I'll find you."

 


End file.
